“Soriya, what are you doing here?”
“It’s the only road to Balagezong.”
“But how do you know all of this? You’ve been here, to these places, before?”
“Yes.” The killer’s voice was quite calm, but her eyes burned, staring at the very first stars. “I have been preparing for several years. I got an army pension. Battlefield wounds. Bought me the time, to do this.”
“Preparing how? How did you prepare?”
No answer.
“Preparing how?” Julia repeated. “Learning to kill?”
Her question was brutal; Soriya shrugged and said, “I didn’t have to learn that. The army taught me that. No. I tried to learn some languages. And then, as I said, I traced and tracked the different… Communists. I also honed my skills over time. Faked suicides. Learned to sedate: by disabling, then injecting. Methohexital. Carefully. Intravenously. You can’t just inject it in the buttocks.”
“And here?”
“I have been here several times before. I came to Zhongdian, and then to Balagezong. Disguised. Preparing for today. OK. Today. You need to decide.”
“Decide what?”
“Tomorrow I am going to Balagezong. The last chapter of the story.”
Julia tried to speak; Soriya raised a small, strong, dark-skinned hand.
“I am leaving tomorrow morning at dawn and it is unlikely I’ll be coming back this way. So I’ll be gone and no one will see me again. But I can’t just let you go back to Zhongdian. And call the police. So my friends here will make sure you stay put.”
“Imprison me?”
“Yes. You won’t be harmed. But you won’t be able to leave. Not for a week. By which point my task will be done. Finished. Either way.”
“So…”
“The alternative. There is an alternative. If you want, you can come with me. And you can maybe find a way to save your friends.”
Julia protested: “But how? How can I save them?”
“I have no idea. But I give you the choice because you gave me the truth. You don’t have to trust me, I am a madwoman and a murderer, after all.”
The wind carried scents of pine and ice through the glassless window. The darkness was fanged with frost.
41
“Dude.”
The swamp mist cleared from the Butcher’s Lake of his mind. He was still alive.
“You had us worried. Big time.”
Jake sat up; he was in a bed. A clean white bed in a clean white room without windows. Tyrone was standing at the end of the bed, laconically leaning, skinny in his blue jeans.
“But…” Jake sought his watch. His watch was gone. “Where am I? How long have I been out?”
“Six fucking days! You nearly died. The doctors had to put you in a coma. Induced. To save you. But you should be fine now. We put all your blood back. Those idiots, the morons, on the back road, they thought you were someone else. We didn’t think you would take the back road.”
“Ty.” He was beyond confused. He wondered if he was still hallucinating. “Where am I?”
Tyrone pulled up a chair and sat down.
“Balagezong. In the clinic. Top of the mountain. Bala village. Great views. Shame you haven’t got any windows.”
The electric realization shot through him.
“Chemda!”
Jake leaped from the bed — but he didn’t leap from the bed. A metal clanking noise, and a sharp pain in his ankle, told him why. He was chained: ankle-cuffed to the steel frame of the bed.
Uncomprehending, Jake stared at the irons clamped around his leg. He was a prisoner? Then why was he rescued?
Tyrone tutted.
“Relax. Chemda is fine. And here, take this, madman.” Tyrone threw a plastic bag onto the bed. “Sorry about the leg irons, necessary precaution. We thought if you woke up in the dark and panicked and bolted, you might wander off a cliff. Or get angry or something. Lot of cliffs around here.” He grinned. “Hey. You must be hungry, eat the food and I’ll come back in a moment. We can talk more. Lots to talk about.”
Tyrone walked out of the room. Jake stared at the blank white concrete wall. Chemda was OK? What was going on? How had Tyrone made it here so quickly? Had he really been unconscious for six days?
It was too much. He was very hungry.
The plastic bag contained bottles of mineral water and a couple of sandwiches wrapped in foil. Jake drank the water and ate the food. Then he lay back, still hungry, staring at the bruises in the crook of each arm. Where they had tried to drain all his blood.
So he hadn’t imagined that.
There were so many questions, it was tiring: physically wearying. He found himself drifting into unconsciousness once again. His sleep was disturbed by the creak of the door.
Tyrone. The American gave him another sardonic smile.
“That’s better. Bit of color in your cheeks. For a Brit.”
This time Tyrone pulled up a chair, swiveling it so he was sitting reversewise, arms laid on the top of the chair back. Jake gazed, the bewilderment fighting the tiredness in his mind.
“OK,” said Tyrone. “Give me your questions.”
“All I care about,” said Jake, “is Chemda. Where is she?”
“Patience. Jesus, you really do love her, don’t ya? She is fine. Unharmed. What next?”
“Sovirom Sen. Did he make it here?”
Tyrone pulled the chair nearer.
“Yes. He’s here.” Tyrone sighed. “OK. Yes. It’s confusing: let me explain. First thing you gotta know. Prepare yourself.”
“What?”
“Sovirom Sen is Khmer Rouge. And not just that. In the 1970s he was a member of the elite, just beneath Ieng Sary and the Butcher. A cadre. A leader.”
Jake fought his utter confusion. “Sen? But Ty, he is a known anti-Communist, famous for it.”
“Dude, he lied. He is a liar. He lies. He was the most committed Communist of all. But the Khmer Rouge fell. And of course he is not stupid, he is a very clever and far-sighted man. Sharp as fuck, like all the KR. He realized that to survive and prosper in the postregime era he had to pretend that he hated communism, hated the Pol Pot regime.”
“How could you get away with that?”
Tyrone’s smile was pert.
“You think he is the only one? How many former Khmer Rouge officials are now at the top of the Cambodian government? Some of the more foolish are open about it — many more conceal it, the more subtle operators, perhaps. And the transition is easy. We see it across the world, right? Regimes change, yet the personnel stay the same. And in Cambodia everyone assists in the deception. Because the country’s tragedy is too large to endure, the grief too immense, two million too big. Only the deaf and the mute survive. And the only exit is survival. So they have this conspiracy of denial, of silence, of accepting the common lies.” Ty sighed. “Poor old Cambodia. Still, they shouldn’t have gone bat-shit crazy, should they? Gooks.”
Jake attempted a question: “But what does this mean? Now?
“I have pieced together the narrative, with a bit of help. Apparently the trouble began when Chemda, your beautiful, smart, and determined little Khmer princess girlfriend…” Tyrone’s eyes were bright. “The trouble started when she took a more detailed interest in the recent history of Cambodia. Working with the United Nations, the ‘reconciliation’ tribunals. Talking about the babies they smashed against trees. The monks they burned alive. The people they threw into the sea.”
“Sen tried to dissuade her.”
“Yup. He was worried, but then he reluctantly decided she should have her way. He reckoned she would soon tire of her idealism and meet a young man, and she would then want a family like any good Khmer daughter, and she’d give up the lawyering. But she persisted. And then she began investigating the Plain of Jars. Coming close to her grandfather’s history, to his concealed past.”